In fact, unless that is 100% your personality, I think it’s slightly incongruent.

Maybe you struggle with this too, finding the balance between nice guy (who you really are – most guys are generally good people!) and “alpha”.

So, just wait ‘til you try this (or the equivalent):

My girl eats a lot of cheese.

I think it’s a Ukrainian thing, because her friend does too. Between these two girls they must consume a dozen of these little cheeses a week.

They’re small little circles, roughly 120 grams. Just enough for a larg(ish?) snack.

So anyways, my girl practically eats one of these things a day. I never stop making fun of her for it.

Here’s what I did:

I went and bought a half-dozen of the things (they’re a buck each), and completely lined the fridge with them. An entire shelf is taken up with camembert cheese.

I even took special precaution to make sure that ALL of her other food, juice, milk, etc. is hidden behind it.

Now, this is definitely a “nice” thing to do. And it’s also a dickish thing to do.

But I’m also going to have a kick out of it when she opens the fridge this afternoon and sees all those cheeses looking at her.

This is the important part:

I am amusing myself.

Sure, I’m doing something quite nice for her. She’s got a week’s supply of cheese. But I’m poking fun at her at the same time, and I’m going to have a good laugh out of it. I may even film it and use it to blackmail tease her later.

But hang on.

We’re not through yet.

Girls can’t help but be attracted by these kind of things. This one simple action, which cost me $6 and no time whatsoever, does the following:

= Provides – she is being “taken care of” by the man in her life

= Amused mastery – I’m entertaining myself (at her expense), showing that I can have a laugh at life

= Keeping her on her toes – she never knows whether she’ll get the more quiet, stoic guy, or the guy who is being nice and buying her cheese, or the goofy guy who is going to laugh his ass off at her later (in this specific case she’s getting two of these)

All of these = attraction.

Here’s how you can implement this, too:

Got a girl you like, or a girlfriend? Take her favorite cheap food/drink and completely fill one of her shelves with it. Make sure it’s something that you tease her often for.

It’s that easy.

Preferably, make it a healthier thing. I wouldn’t encourage any girl (especially westerners) to eat copious amounts of Oreo cookies, for example.

So, the message is clear:

Balancing “alpha” and “nice guy” can be difficult, but it really doesn’t take much to pull off both at the same time.

Just insert a food or drink and prepare for a laugh.

There’s more great tips in King’s Code, which is still on it’s Amazon super-sale. Get it here:

I’ve got a map of the local zoo that sits on my table. I took the maps they pass out at the entrance took them home, and had them laminated. They are pretty cool little placemats that get a lot of compliments.

Every day when I look at those maps, I try to remind myself not to take life too seriously.

Reason why:

We’re all animals.

No matter which way you spin the puzzle of life, no matter what it comes down to biology and survival. Ya can’t fault women for doing what they need to do to survive, no matter how cruel it may seem on the surface.

That’s why today I want to talk about the “friend zone”…

Example:

Do you think a badass lion would be cool with one of the lionesses in his pride saying, “Hey, Simba, I really like you but I think we should just be friends…”

He’d have nothing to do with that, that girl would be exiled to the far reaches of the savannah.

So when a girl friend zones you (a human), it’s simply her way of saying that you *aren’t good enough* for her.

Take, as an example:

The first girl I ever really crushed on. I was 14, and I managed to summon up the guts to actually bring her flowers on Valentine’s Day. Cheesy, but she “loved it”…

…and then stuck me in the friend zone.

A year or so later, I finally caught on to her gig, and cut her out of my life. I set about improving myself (that’s when I lost 75 or so pounds), took up guitar and kart racing, and overall became a much better and interesting person.

And then:

She started trying to make contact with me.

And I let her, and all of a sudden things had totally switched around. I was “good enough” in the terms of the food chain.

Sure, I hated her guts at the time.

But now?

I can look back and just chuckle. Because she became intersted after I became interesting, and of course was heading off to college (unlike many of other peers) to study. Her survival instincts kicked in.

The lesson’s this:

Learning these lessons in life is truly painful. It usually takes a good shot in the gut of heartbreak. And it’s usually not a shot either. It’s often extended over a long period of time.

The thing is, once you figure out how lions think…all of a sudden you have more than what you know what to do with.

Kind of like how the female lions bring the pride leader all the food he wants.

One more thing, it’s important:

I tried my best to explain every situation possible in my book, to help avoid the heartbreak, gut punches, and overall BS that modern dating puts men through.

A lot of time has passed since I was 14 and I’d like to think I’m old and wise.

I’m sitting in Starbucks in an off-the-grid neighborhood of my little EE city. So off-the-grid, in fact, that the nice girl who took my order was actually surprised and shocked to speak English.

Story time:

There is a girl sitting close to me. She’s very cute. She has a MacBook Air, so she’s probably a hipster.

Then again, I’m typing this on a gawd-damn iPad so I should probably not talk about hipsterdom. she’s been playing on Facebook for the last 45 minutes since I sat down. Who knows how long she’s been here prior to that.

The look on her face is absolutely priceless.

There is no emotion, and hardly any life as she scrolls lifelessly through her timeline.

It’s a Friday afternoon, the sun is out (albeit it’s a bit cold). And she is sitting in Starbucks bored out of her mind.

I feel bad for the girl, but this is our modern reality. Looking everywhere for a passion, for entertainment. Something to pass the time. We have so many tools at our disposal to entertain us, and yet we are still bored.

This is ridiculous enough to say as I type these words, but:

The guy sitting on the other side of me, doing the exact same thing (except with a Samsung Galaxy). In many ways they are exactly the same.

It is up to you to determine what you want to pursue in life. But whatever it is, make damn sure it’s worthwhile. And if you decide to settle down with a girl, make sure she has her own missions she is following (#1 should be supporting you and raising your family).

Don’t let her scroll her Facebook feed like this girl in Starbucks unless you want her brain to rot like moldy milk.

Better yet, get a good girl from the very get-go.

King’s Code will teach you how, and it’s only barely the price of this shitty cup of coffee (but only ’til tomorrow):

In February of this year, I sat down and wrote 10,000 words in one day for my new book. I’d tentatively planned to call it ‘Fallen’.

My intention was for it to summarize my entire “journey” from 21-year-old-sexless-dweeb and then onwards to 25 – living abroad and having my pick of girls.

I wrote those 10,000 words and thought I was nearly done with it (it made it 70,000 total). I figured a few more weeks of a thousand or so words a day and it’d be a wrap.

And I haven’t touched it since February.

The reason for this is because I just didn’t feel like my “journey” was complete. You see, I wanted to make Fallen about how far men have come down in society, and how one needs to get all his shit together in order to really “make it”.

I just realized I needed to live a bit more (a lot) before I could put the finishing touches on that book. There were things I still needed to figure out. Experiences to be had, and mistakes to be made.

But now as this year comes to a close (it is December 1st, after all!) I realize that the ”journey” will NEVER be done. And it won’t be for you, either. There is always something new to tackle. Another mountain to climb. It is simply how we are wired as men. There is no end to the mountains we will climb.

We are only happy, fulfilled, and content when we are climbing. The view from the top can be cherished, but only temporarily.

I don’t know if there is a “fix” for this. But maybe it’s not a curse, to begin with. Perhaps it is just how we’re wired. Perhaps this book shouldn’t be about how men have fallen, but how men can never stop climbing.

Maybe it’s time I summon the courage and finish this book, with the understanding that my journey will never truly end.

Hopefully I can get this put out to you sometime in the beginning of next year.

But, that’s not all:

I wrote King’s Code in one 15 hour day, and it’s received rave feedback to the tune of a 5-star average review on Amazon.

Yesterday’s email told the story about the cocaine in da club…en el Colombia.

So here I am. In this random club in the ghetto of Barranquilla, and I’m getting an offer from my gringo buddy to go do lines of coke in the bathroom.

And…

I didn’t.

I’m not sure why. I wish I had, in hindsight. Again, there wouldn’t have been a better time to do it. I’m not hugely keen on going back to South America anytime, so I wish I’d YOLO’D that coke like a fat girl munching on cake.

Alas, it wasn’t to be.

But, I do regret it – barely.

Here’s the thing:

Life is really, really short. I mean, I started This Is Trouble when I was 22 years old. I’m 26 now. It’s hard for me to fathom that I’ve lived abroad for almost two years. I

And that’s not all…

It keeps speeding up.

No matter what I do. And I don’t want to look back on my life and have ANY regrets. And you shouldn’t, either.

So if you’re not happy with your dating life. Or you want to date hotter girls. Or you want to learn how to just have the relationship on your terms and not hers.

Then you owe it to yourself to have no regrets.

And the exclusive Bang Black Friday package is yours, but only for a little while longer.

I’m at the club, partying with my two friends. My mind was already made up. I knew I’d be going back to LA and making plans to move.

You’ll never guess what happened next (or maybe you can).

My friend, drunk off his ass at this point, just says to me, “Hey bro, I’m going to go do coke in the bathroom. You’re welcome to join me.”

It blew my mind. Here’s why:

The fact that despite the fact that Colombia was dangerous in it’s own right, it made me realize what FREEDOM was. The fact that you could literally just walk into a random bathroom in a random club in a random city, and go do a line of cocaine.

It shocked me.

I also (still) don’t understand how people managed to blatantly sneak that much cocaine past the armed doormen. Maybe sharing is caring.

And you want to know something?

I’d never done coke in my life. In fact, the only drugs I’d ever done was to eat a weed brownie.

But here I was. In Colombia for the first time. Planning on going home and quitting my job.

I mean, if there was EVER a time to have a new experience, this would have been it. To really announce my freedom away from the shackles of what American life had always told me I was supposed to live.

I turned back to my friend:

And I’ll tell you what I said…tomorrow.

In the meantime though, Bang Black Friday is back this year. This deal originally was put together with those same friends in Colombia two years ago.

One with some spice, some crunch, and some good ‘ol Buffalo-wingy goodness. Nay impossible to find it.

You can find any type of Asian food imaginable.

You can even find pretty good Mexican in a lot of places.

And of course, you can eat dumplings and potatoes to your hearts content…

But a good chicken wing? Impossible.

And the American chains that have invaded other places, like TGI Friday’s and Hooters – suck.

But, here’s the thing:

I’ve found one place that DOES have the best chicken wings (the guy is from Wisconsin), so that’s where I’ll be spending my Thanksgiving.

At this time last year, I went to Hooters. But after another year of living abroad under my belt, I’m an expert in the matter.

But you want to know why I’ll spend my Thanksgiving here at an American joint with three Ukrainians (my girl + our friends who are ridiculously excited to “celebrate” Thanksgiving for the first time)?

Because it’s a taste of home, and it’s just what you need at times.

Yes, expat life is great and I have no regrets. BUT, there are times that you wish you were home, or at least had the comforts of home. Chicken wings are my guilty pleasure that remind me of home without having to actually travel to California.

You want to know why I tolerate less-than-top-notch chicken wings on a consistent basis?

The females in Eastern Europe. Yes, even when I’m watching them eat chicken wings (they’ll never figure out how to do it properly).

The point is:

When the girls are such high-quality overall, even doing shit like eating is far more tolerable. The thought of watching a 250-pound American fatty eating chicken wings makes me want to vomit.

If you’re going to piss away money on coffee, at least make sure it’s good stuff; i.e. not Starbucks 😉

I’ll tell you this:

Those frugal and minimalism bloggers advising you to someone live your life on $10 a day are unrealistic. It takes a special kind of anomaly to be able to pull that off, and actually enjoy life on any level.

I’d wager that the number of people in the world who can do it is less than those who are truly capable of building a business. The percentage for that (biz) is low, too. Many folks aren’t cut out for it, and that’s okay. Hell, I have a pretty large family and I’m the ONLY one in it that has their own company…

What’s the bottom line?

$3 at Starbucks a day * 365 days a year = $1,095

That’s not even $100 a month, it’s $91.25 to be exact.

I know I like to poke fun at digital nomads who insist on living in Thailand so they can get a $175/month apartment, but. You can see that the Starbucks Saving won’t even change much for them – it’ll only pay half their rent!

The issue with all of this is the mindset.

Changing your Starbucks addiction puts you in the mindset of being being cheap, which doesn’t inspire you to work hard and build something.

It’s focused on the present, not the future.

And we all know the future is where the millionaires are thinking.

One more thing:

A website is a key part of any business, and I consult for free if you buy via one of my affiliate links.

It’s a great way to share the love, and affiliate marketing is one of the simplest ways to make sure you can afford your Starbucks.